An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus is designed to apply ultrasonic pulses generated by transducers incorporated in an ultrasonic probe into an object to be examined, convert reflected waves generated by the difference in acoustic impedance between object tissues into electrical signals through the transducers, and display the resultant image on a monitor. This diagnostic method allows easy acquisition of various types of image data by simple operation of only bringing the ultrasonic probe into contact with the body surface, and hence is widely used for functional diagnosis or morphological diagnosis of various organs.
Ultrasonic diagnostic methods of obtaining biological information by using reflected waves from tissues or blood cells in a living body have rapidly progressed along with two great technical developments of an ultrasonic pulse reflection method and ultrasonic Doppler method. B-mode image data and color Doppler image data obtained by these techniques have become indispensable to recent ultrasonic diagnosis. In addition, a spectrum Doppler method for acquiring spectrum image data that allows quantitative measurement of blood flow information of a diagnostic target region is used for circulatory organ regions, abdominal regions, and the like.
When performing ultrasonic examination on an object by sequentially acquiring these image data, although image data acquisition conditions constituted by many imaging parameters suitable for the acquisition of the respective image data are set before examination, it is necessary to set the respective imaging parameters used for ultrasonic examination for each examination based on not only the imaging modes set when acquiring the above image data (i.e., the B mode, color Doppler mode, and spectrum Doppler mode) but also the body type, age, and the like of the object. For this reason, it takes much time to set image data acquisition conditions optimal for such ultrasonic examination, leading to a deterioration in examination efficiency.
In order to solve such a problem, there has recently been practiced a method of initializing a preset standard image data acquisition condition as a preset condition (to be described later as a mother preset condition) and acquiring desired image data by finely adjusting the preset condition under the observation of image data acquired based on the preset condition.
Setting the above preset condition before ultrasonic examination makes it possible to efficiently set image data acquisition conditions. However, as has been described above, since optimal image data acquisition conditions vary depending on the body type, age, and the like of the object, it is often necessary to change and update some of the initialized preset conditions during the examination.
In such a case, the above conventional method has a problem that, for example, since the image data acquisition conditions newly set by updating the preset conditions in the preceding imaging mode return to the image data acquisition conditions in the initialized imaging mode when the imaging mode shifts to the subsequent imaging mode, it is necessary to reset each preset condition every time an imaging mode is restarted or a new imaging mode is selected.
This disclosure has been made in consideration of the above problem. It is an object to provide an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus which updates image data acquisition conditions initialized by using a mother preset condition set in advance, based on sub-preset conditions set for each imaging mode as a unit, and can acquire desired image data in a short period of time by generating image data based on the image data acquisition conditions after the update, an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus control method, and a medical image diagnostic apparatus.